Jeffery Deaver - Carte Blanche

But his mind wandered and he kept imagining the body of the young woman, Stella, now in a grave somewhere beneath the restless sands of the Empty Quarter south of Dubai. While her beauty in life hadn’t aroused him, the picture in his mind’s eye of her in a few months or years certainly did. And in a thousand, she’d be just like the bodies he’d viewed at the museum last night.

He rose, slipped his suit jacket on to a hanger and returned to his desk. He took and placed a string of phone calls, all relating to Green Way’s legitimate business. None was particularly engaging… until the company’s head of sales for South Africa, who was on the floor just below Hydt’s, called.

‘Severan, I’ve got some Afrikaner from Durban on the line. He wants to talk to you about a disposal project.’

‘Send him a brochure and tell him I’ll be tied up till next week.’ Gehenna was the priority and Hydt had no interest in taking on new accounts at the moment.

‘He doesn’t want to hire us. He’s talking about some arrangement between Green Way and his company.’

‘Joint venture?’ Hydt asked cynically. Entrepreneurs always emerged when you started to enjoy success, and got publicity, in your chosen field. ‘Too much going on now. I’m not interested. Thank him, though.’

‘All right. Oh, but I was supposed to mention one thing. Something odd. He said to tell you that the problem he’s got is the same as at Isandlwana in the 1870s.’

Hydt looked away from the documents on his desk. A moment later he realised he was gripping the phone hard. ‘You’re sure that’s what he said?’

‘Yes. “The same as at Isandlwana”. No idea what he meant.’

‘He’s in Durban?’

‘His company’s headquarters are there. He’s at his Cape Town office for the day.’

‘See if he’s free to come in.’

‘When?’ the sales manager asked.

A fractional pause, then Hydt said, ‘Now.’

In January 1879, the war between Great Britain and the Zulu Kingdom kicked off in earnest with a stunning defeat for the British. At Isandlwana, overwhelming forces (twenty thousand Zulus versus fewer than two thousand British and colonial troops) and some bad tactical decisions resulted in a complete rout. It was there that the Zulus broke the British Square, the famous defensive formation in which one line of soldiers fired while another, directly behind, reloaded, offering the enemy a nearly unremitting volley of bullets – in that instance, with the deadly Martini-Henry breech-loading rifles.

But the tactic hadn’t worked; thirteen hundred British soldiers and allied forces died.

The ‘disposal’ problem that the Afrikaner had referred to could mean only one thing. The battle had occurred in January, the fiercely hot dog days of summer in the region of what was now KwaZulu-Natal; removing the bodies quickly was a necessity… and a major logistical issue.

The disposal of remains was also one of the major problems that Gehenna would present in future projects and Hydt and Dunne had been discussing it over the past month.

Why on earth would a businessman from Durban have a problem along these lines that required Hydt’s assistance?

Ten lengthy minutes later his secretary stepped into his doorway. ‘A Mr Theron is here, sir. From Durban.’

‘Good, good. Show him in. Please.’

She vanished and returned a moment later with a tough-looking, edgy man, who glanced around Hydt’s office cautiously, yet with an air of challenge. He was dressed in the business outfit common to South Africa: a suit and smart shirt, but no tie. Whatever his line he must have been successful; a heavy gold bracelet encircled his right wrist and his watch was a flashy Breitling. A gold initial ring too, which was a touch brash, Hydt thought.

‘Morning.’ The man shook Hydt’s hand. He noticed the long yellowing fingernails but did not recoil, as had happened on more than one occasion. ‘Gene Theron,’ he said.

‘Severan Hydt.’

They exchanged business cards.

Eugene J. Theron

President, EJT Services, Ltd

Durban, Cape Town and Kinshasa

Hydt reflected: an office in the capital of Congo, one of the most dangerous cities in Africa. This was interesting.

The man glanced at the door, which was open. Hydt rose and closed it, returned to his desk. ‘You’re from Durban, Mr Theron?’

‘Yes, and my main office is there. But I travel a lot. And you?’ The faint accent was melodious.

‘London, Holland and here. I get to the Far East and India too. Wherever business takes me. Now, “Theron”. The name’s Huguenot, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘We forget Afrikaners are not always Dutch.’

Theron lifted an eyebrow as if he’d heard such comments since he was a child and was tired of them.

Hydt’s phone trilled. He looked at the screen. It was Niall Dunne. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said to Theron, who nodded. Then: ‘Yes?’ Hydt asked, pressing the phone close to his ear.

‘Theron’s legit. South African passport. Lives in Durban and has a security company with headquarters there, with branches here and in Kinshasa. Father’s Afrikaner, mother’s British. Grew up mostly in Kenya.’

Dunne continued, ‘He’s been suspected of supplying troops and arms to conflict regions in Africa, South East Asia and Pakistan. No active investigations. The Cambodians detained him in a human trafficking and mercenary investigation because of what he’d been up to in Shan, Myanmar, but let him go. Nothing in Interpol. And he’s pretty successful, from what I can tell.’

Hydt had deduced that himself; the man’s Breitling was worth around five thousand pounds.

‘I just texted a picture to you,’ Dunne added.

It appeared on Hydt’s screen and showed the man in front of him. Dunne went on, ‘But… whatever he’s proposing, are you sure you want to think about it now?’

Hydt thought he sounded jealous – perhaps that the mercenary might have a project that would deflect attention from Dunne’s plans for Gehenna. He said, ‘Those sales figures are better than I thought. Thank you.’ He disconnected. Then he asked Theron, ‘How did you hear about me?’

Although they were alone Theron lowered his voice as he turned hard, knowing eyes on Hydt: ‘Cambodia. I was doing some work there. Some people told me of you.’

Ah. Hydt understood now and the realisation gave him a thrill. Last year on business in the Far East he’d stopped to visit several gravesites of the infamous Killing Fields, where the Khmer Rouge had slaughtered millions of Cambodians in the 1970s. At the memorial at Choeung Ek, where nearly nine thousand bodies had been buried in mass graves, Hydt had spoken to several veterans about the slaughter and taken hundreds of pictures for his collection. One of the locals must have mentioned his name to Theron.

‘You had business there, you say?’ Hydt asked, thinking of what Dunne had learnt.

‘Nearby,’ Theron replied with a suitable brush of evasion.

Hydt was intensely curious but, a businessman first and foremost, he tried not to appear too enthusiastic. ‘And what do Isandlwana and Cambodia have to do with me?’

‘They are places where there was a great loss of life. Many bodies were interred where they fell in battle.’

Choeung Ek was genocide, not a battle, but Hydt did not correct him.

‘They’ve become sacred areas. And that’s good, I suppose. Except…’ The Afrikaner paused. ‘I’ll tell you about a problem I have become aware of and about a solution that has occurred to me. Then you can tell me if that solution is possible and if you have an interest in helping me achieve it.’

‘Go on.’

Theron said, ‘I have many connections to governments and companies in various parts of Africa.’ He paused. ‘Darfur, Congo, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, a few others.’